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      “For every They there ought to be a We”: The (Almost) Equivalence of Power and Resistance in Mason & Dixon and Against the Day

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      Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon

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          Abstract

          Power and resistance are considered two of Pynchon's principal themes, examined thoroughly by scholars. This essay provides an alternative reading of resistance and examines a change in how it is portrayed in Mason & Dixon and Against the Day; in the latter, it appears as much more powerful than in the former, even as a potential successor to existent authority, and this creates a need to reexamine the dichotomy between authority and preterite. In Mason & Dixon there is already a clash between the old and the new regime, religion and science, evident even in the background of the two protagonists; furthermore, the resistance, as is depicted by a nascent movement for American independence, is not a failure; its ideals will transform it into the state tyranny shown in Vineland. In Against the Day, anarchism, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, is presented as an alternative to capitalism and employs similar techniques to those used by the latter, based on the anonymity of its hierarchy and the victimization not only of those outside its network, the never innocent bourgeois, but also the individuals that follow it. The theoretical framework for such an analysis will need to distance itself from an – otherwise useful – Marxist approach and move towards Foucault's idea of authority as expressed in the first volume of The History of Sexuality. Resistance is not external to authority; it is an opponent within the power network.

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          Most cited references32

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          Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison

          <b>A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre.</b> <br><br>In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.
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            Lenin and philosophy and other essays

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              Gravity's Rainbow

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon
                Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon
                2044-4095
                2014
                : 2
                : 2
                Affiliations
                Independent Researcher
                Article
                10.7766/orbit.v2.2.71
                0a4bca9c-59cb-4a9d-a2d1-2bbcbda549ca
                Copyright © 2014, Georgios Maragos

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The citation of this article must include: the name(s) of the authors, the name of the journal, the full URL of the article (in a hyperlinked format if distributed online) and the DOI number of the article.

                History

                Literary studies,History
                Literary studies, History

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